MNPS BOE Agenda Packet for October 24,2006

I never did receive the agenda packet for the last meeting so I was plesantly surprised when this week's arrived in the mail. I've uploaded a .pdf of the 61 page document to my website.


There was, however, a bright purple page announcing:

This is the last Board Agenda that will be U.S. mailed. The agenda will be posted on the MNPS website at http://www.mnps.org/Page23.aspx when it is delivered to the Board of Education.

Full agenda packets will be available in the Board Administrator's office at 2601 Bransford Avenue, Nashville, Tennessee, 37204 if you prefer to pick one up.

I've written asking if the agenda uploaded to that website is merely just the agenda or if it's going to be the entire agenda packet. I'll let you know what they say. I think they should create an e-list subscription of folks who want to receive that entire agenda packet in .pdf format.

Highlights from this 10/24/06 agenda include:

Both the 9/26/06 and the 10/10/06 minutes are included for approval.

The 10/10/06 minutes include an overview of the Science & Math School at Vanderbilt for MNPS students to begin in the Fall of 2007. This would be a one day a week session according to the minutes.

"Big Picture School, geared toward students who are potential drop-outs, high-risk students, etc." was introduced at the 10/10/06 meeting and this upcoming meeting includes the awarding of a contract "to provide the necessary expertise and services to enable MNPS to open a Big Picture School in 2007." Cost is somewhere between $150,000 and $200,000. I'm not fond of $50K in monetary slop. The new Director of the Office of Reform and Innovations will evaluate this on a monthly basis to determine it's usefulness.

The 1Point Solutions (no surprise their website is down) scandal, political scandal, scandal touches our MNPS staff and so the BOE will consider moving that service to Fringe Benefits Management Company. Maybe someone should check their political contributions record before approving this contract. [UPDATE: maybe there won't be much consideration by the BOE as this item is on the consent agenda. That means unless one of the BOE members pulls it there will be no public discussion Tuesday evening.]

The school calendar is up for discussion and the balanced calendar isn't dead. Interestingly the SEIU and the Steelworkers have indicated their opposition to a balanced calendar but failed to appear at a meeting about it. According to Dr. Garcia's District Calendar EE-14 report:

Representatives from SEIU and the Steelworkers were invited but did not attend the meeting in which agreement was reached on the balanced calendar. In a previous meeting, SEIU and the Steelworkers indicated their opposition to a balanced calendar based on the time without pay being spread throughout the year rather than all in the summer. Their concern is about the loss of earnings during the summer for less than 12 month employees. the administration, MNEA and the parent [representative] unanimously recommended that the Board adopt the balanced calendar for 2008-2009 due to the many advantages in all aspects of the calendar.

Both a traditional and a balanced calendar are provided for review.

And it is a new day. Former BOE member George Blue's self-evaluation system is being replaced by a debriefing asking: What did we do well? What could we do better? What would you wish we do at our next meeting?

Again a .pdf version of the 61 page agenda packet can be found at KayBrooks.com here.